Texas Fracking Foes Use ‘Setbacks’ to Ban Drilling

In recent years, critics of U.S. oil and gas development have pushed for regulations establishing more separation between drilling sites and local structures, such as buildings or residential areas. Environmental groups often claim these rules are simply designed for a better overall regulatory structure, but a closer examination suggests that the real goal is to ban drilling altogether.

The allowable distances between well sites and established structures — also called setbacks — vary by region. But as U.S. oil and gas production has increased significantly over the past few years, many activist groups have adopted new tactics to try to limit development in any manner possible. That includes making it nearly impossible to operate through overly restrictive local ordinances, such as abnormally large setbacks.

The situation is the most pronounced in the Barnett Shale of north Texas, where environmentalists have claimed certain setbacks are necessary to protect public health, even as industry operations have occurred safely in other parts of the region with setbacks that are far less than the distances that many activists claim are required.

In the city of Fort Worth, which houses more than 1,000 wells, the setback is 600 feet. A major air quality study conducted for the city in 2011 – around the time when Barnett Shale gas production was at its highest point – concluded that “Fort Worth’s 600-foot setback distance is adequate” to protect public health. The available data also “did not reveal any significant health threats,” according to the study.

Despite those findings, critics have lobbied other cities throughout the Metroplex to adopt stricter ordinances that increase setbacks to more than twice the distance allowed in Fort Worth.

Similarly, the city of Southlake adopted a setback of 1,000 feet in 2011, or about 67 percent farther than what’s allowed in Fort Worth. The Fort Worth Star-Telegramobserved that “setbacks have always been the most controversial item because it determines whether drilling can occur in the city at all.”

For about a year, the city managed to stall the task force, until a weak ordinance was finally submitted to the planning and zoning commission. By the time the proposed ordinance hit the City Council in 2011, Occupy Denton, then at its peak, helped galvanize grassroots activists, who organized and won a moratorium on fracking permits in the city, while a revised ordinance was put together.

The meetings where public comments were allowed were always attended by at least 20 anti-fracking activists, and DAG and Denton Off Fossil Fuels (DOFF) maintained a presence, while trying to figure out how to propose our own ordinance. In fact, DOFF debated whether to propose a full ban or a “de facto” ban–by proposing setbacks of 1,200 feet.

Eventually, people agreed with a “de facto” ban, though a full ban was still on the minds of some. Activists began working to craft a stronger ordinance with setbacks of at least 1,200 feet, air and water quality testing, and requirements for drillers to purchase more insurance in the event of accidents. (emphasis added)

Drilling critics are now flooding into the city of Mansfield – located a few miles south of Arlington, Tex. – and using these “de facto bans” as momentum to try to change the local ordinance. Mansfield’s current setback is 600 feet, the same as Fort Worth’s.

As described in a recent story in Fort Worth Weekly, a local organization recently “worked with Jim Schermbeck, director of Downwinders at Risk, to bring Dr. Ann Epstein to talk to Mansfield residents” about drilling. Epstein is a member of the City of Lubbock Board of Health, which has recommended a setback of 1,500 feet – exactly the same distance that established a “de facto ban” in Dallas. Epstein has said, however, that the Board “is not trying to ban fracking.” The Sierra Club — a major environmental group headquartered in San Francisco, and which opposes natural gas drilling — promoted Epstein’s presentation on its website.

Epstein has also cited research from Colorado– referenced often by “ban fracking” groups — that suggested an increase in congenital heart disease among babies born near oil and gas well sites. Dr. Larry Wolk, the Chief Medical Officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (the agency from which the data were pulled for the research Epstein cited), disavowed those claims, saying that “a reader of the study could easily be misled to become overly concerned.” Wolk added: “I would tell pregnant women and mothers who live, or who at-the-time-of-their-pregnancy lived, in proximity to a gas well not to rely on this study as an explanation of why one of their children might have had a birth defect.” A followup investigation by Colorado health officials revealed there was no link between drilling and fetal abnormalities. Nonetheless, Epstein used that claim to suggest that “proximity to natural gas wells represents a threat to public health.”

In a presentation to the Lubbock Board of Health, Dr. Anne Epstein cites research linking fetal abnormalities to nearby oil and gas drilling as justification to increase setbacks. The data for that research came from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which disavowed the findings and found no such link.

Recently, Epstein submitted a minority report from the Oil and Gas Citizen Advisory Committee to the Lubbock city council, which also called for increased setbacks. Lubbock’s mayor, Glen Robertson, said of the report’s findings: “I think their data is flawed,” observing that the authors “gathered data in areas outside of Lubbock” as a means of influencing the debate inside the city.

Downwinders at Risk, meanwhile, has played an “instrumental” role in stopping drilling throughout the Barnett Shale region, according to Fort Worth Weekly:

“The Downwinders have been instrumental in helping cities like Dallas and Southlake to write drilling ordinances with setbacks large enough to seriously limit well development.” (emphasis added)

If critics of development want to ban drilling, then why don’t they just say so? The answer, in a word, is politics.

Polls consistently show the American public strongly supports increased U.S. energy development, making campaigns to ban drilling an uphill climb at best. But environmental activists can still achieve “de facto” bans through different means, including setbacks and other measures that can be sold not as outright bans, but more moderate things like “protecting health” or “closing loopholes.”

In Denton, the local anti-fracking campaign tried to distance itself from advocating for an all-out drilling ban, stating on its website that its ballot measure to ban fracking “does not prohibit gas drilling in Denton,” and that “a prohibition on hydraulic fracturing is not a ban on gas drilling.” The activists’ stated concerns, however, had more to do with drilling than the specific “fracking” process, and the Texas Supreme Court has stated at leasttwice that fracking is required for development in the Barnett Shale. Similarly, before the Dallas de facto ban was finalized, city officials told the New York Times that they had “no intention of banning drilling” with their ordinance.

The only problem, of course, is that if an ordinance effectively condemns any new drilling, then the regulatory approach is a distinction without a difference. Many of the activists throughout north Texas recognize that, and they desperately hope other residents don’t.

[…] The release of the study comes as the City of Mansfield is considering revisions to its drilling ordinance, with the first hearing scheduled for Monday, February 23. Local activist groups are lobbying the city to adopt larger setbacks, much like they have done in other North Texas cities to prevent new drilling. Energy In Depth previously covered how anti-fracking groups are using setbacks as a means of banning oil and gas development. […]

[…] well existed before the ordinance was enacted. Dallas, Flower Mound, Southlake, and Denton have more sizable setback ordinances greater than 600 feet, none of which will stand if the bill passes. The ordinances in Fort […]